Do you ever have those days where you just want to sit and play with your stamps without a lot of extra fuss with colouring or masking or any of those other techniques that involve a lot of effort and preparation? Of course, you still want a great result at the end, but the thought of setting up the equipment, pulling out the inks or the clean up at the end is all too much?
Well, this technique might be exactly what you're looking for. It's easy and fun to do, only involves a couple of ink pads and some stamps and, I think, the result is lovely.
1. Select the stamps you'd like to use. The idea is to create depth so you want images that would naturally occur en masse, such as flowers or trees, birds or butterflies. I used several of the lovely wildflower stamps from a set by Darkroom Door and arranged them on my acrylic block (you can use a single image if you don't have multiples). Then choose two ink pads that you think would work well with your images... I decided on a pretty green and a lovely blue.
2. Ink your stamp with one of the colours, then stamp once on a piece of scrap paper to remove most of the ink.
3. Immediately stamp on your cardstock. Because you already stamped off most of the ink on the scrap paper you will end up with a soft, light impression.
4. Repeat the process until you have images across the entire piece of card.
5. Now use your second colour to ink up the stamp. Again, stamp once on a piece of scrap paper and then immediately on to your card. Stagger the height and position of the stamp so your images don't overlap.
6. At this point I took my stamps off the acrylic block and rearranged them so I would end up with a more natural, random pattern. Obviously if you're working with a single stamp you won't be able to do this.
7. Using the same ink pads, reink you stamps and immediately stamp on to your card. The colours will now be much more vibrant and it will give the impression of depth - the lighter flowers tend to receded to the background while the bolder flowers are in the foreground.
8. Using the same two colours and a sponge dauber, rub some colour around the edges of your card. I think this helps to frame the image. Now you can add sentiments, embellishments, papers, ribbon... whatever you wish. I stamped and heat embossed a Stampin' Up sentiment to the bottom right corner of my card, distressed the edges and glued on a few stray little butterflies. I then adhered the whole thing to a card base for a lovely, simple card.
